Presentations

I am a frequent presenter at industry events where I frequently speak about open source, systems management and cloud computing. I tend to speak mostly about the intersection of open source cloud computing and software development.

Speaker Bio

Depending on the venue I use multiple biographies applicable to the audience.

Serious Biography

Mark Hinkle is a longtime open source advocate who currently serves as the Senior Director of Open Source Solutions at Citrix. Mark joined Citrix in July 2011 during the acquisition of Cloud.com, where he was Vice President of Community. He is responsible for the Citrix Open Source Business Office and their efforts around Apache CloudStack, the Linux Foundation’s Open Daylight and Xen Project as well as open source Citrix XenServer. Previously, he was the VP of Community at Zenoss Inc. where he grew the Zenoss Core project to over 100,000 users. He has steadfastly evangelized Linux and open source as both a speaker and author having served as Editor-in-Chief for both “LinuxWorld Magazine” and “Enterprise Open Source Magazine” as well authored the book, “Windows to Linux Business Desktop Migration” (Thomson, 2006). He is a committer on the Apache CloudStack project and member of both the Gluster and Xen Project Advisory Board. You can find out more about him at his blog www.socializedsoftware.com or on Twitter @mrhinkle.

Fun Biography

Once upon a time, a lot longer ago then he wished Mark Hinkle was born in a small Pennsylvania town and through the most unlikely sequence of events ended up as a technologist involved in the development and evangelism of free and open source software. Mark has written extensively on open source as the former editor-in-chief of LinuxWorld Magazine and for numerous other publications (Network World, Forbes, Linux.com). He currently is the Senior Director, Cloud Computing at Citrix Systems where he helps support the Apache CloudStack and Xen.org projects. You can find his blog at www.socializedsoftware.com and you can follow him on Twitter @mrhinkle.

Speaking Abstracts

Here are the abstracts from some of my past speaking engagements.

Crash Course in Open Source Cloud Computing

Very few trends in IT have generated as much buzz as cloud computing. This talk will cut through the hype and quickly clarify the ontology for cloud computing. The bulk of the conversation will focus on the open source software that can be used to build compute clouds (infrastructure-as-a-service) and the complimentary open source management tools that can be combined to automate the management of cloud computing environments. The discussion will appeal to anyone who has a good grasp of traditional data center infrastructure but is struggling with the benefits and migration path to a cloud computing environment. Systems administrators and IT generalists will leave the discussion with a general overview of the options at their disposal to effectively build and manage their own cloud computing environments using free and open source software.

IT Takes an (Open Source) Village to Build a Cloud

Not since the Linux operating system has there been such a disruptive technology movement in the data center as cloud computing. Just as Linux, Apache, MySQL and Php/Perl/Python formed the open source foundations for the read-write web open source technologies like Xen, KVM and many others along with Linux are forming the foundations of the cloud. To truly build robust cloud computing environments it requires a wide variety of open source software that when combined create environments that are much greater than the sum of their parts. This session will appeal to both operational users and technology developers who want to gain a perspective on how infrastructure components and management tools can be combined to deliver highly available, scalable cloud services.Additionally the discussion will cover the standards and conventions needed to ensure cloud computing remains open.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Cloud Computing

Imagine it’s eight o’clock on a Thursday morning and you awake to see a bulldozer out your window ready to plow over your data center. Normally you may wish to consult the Encyclopedia Galáctica to discern the best course of action but your copy is likely out of date. And while the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG) is a wholly remarkable book it doesn’t cover the nuances of cloud computing. That’s why you need the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Computing (HHGTCC) or at least to attend this talk understand the state of open source cloud computing. Specifically this talk will cover infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and developments in big data and how to more effectively take advantage of these technologies using open source software. Technologies that will be covered in this talk include Apache CloudStack, Chef, CloudFoundry, NoSQL, OpenStack, Puppet and many more. [For those of you that are Douglas Adams fans please accept the deepest apologies for bad analogies to the HHGTTG.]

Open Source Projects I Support

About Us

This is the personal opinion blog of Mark R. Hinkle and does not reflect the opinion of my employer Citrix Systems Inc.. I am also an avid investor and have holdings in numerous industries, both public and private companies. Investments are often made for me by a third party and best efforts will be made to disclose any investments that may be germane at the time of the posts made herein.

Opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of the author and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.